National Library of Medicine to Discontinue PubMed Health on October 31, 2018

The National Library of Medicine (NLM) has decided to discontinue PubMed Health effective October 31, 2018, as the majority of information it provides is available in more heavily used NLM resources, such as PubMed, Bookshelf, and MedlinePlus. By focusing our attention on these highly used platforms, we will be able to better serve users and meet their needs for access to quality health and medical information.

PubMed Health was introduced eight years ago as a portal for systematic reviews as well as consumer health information. Systematic reviews have been, and will remain, findable through PubMed, and the full text (when available) will continue to be accessible through Bookshelf.

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ithin the next year, PubMed will be adding “Systematic Review” as a Publication Type [pt], which will allow users to find systematic reviews by including the phrase in their search query (e.g., breast cancer AND systematic review[pt]).

Also within the next year, PubMed will include a default check box for systematic reviews. You can get a sense of how that will look by visiting PubMed Labs, our Web site for experimenting with potential new features and interfaces for PubMed.

Most of the consumer health information in PubMed Health, such as information on diseases, conditions and medications, is available through MedlinePlus. NLM remains fully committed to providing health information for patients and the general public.

Gary Price (gprice@mediasourceinc.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. Before launching INFOdocket, Price and Shirl Kennedy were the founders and senior editors at ResourceShelf and DocuTicker for 10 years. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com, and is currently a contributing editor at Search Engine Land.